Contact us Heritage collections Image license terms
HOME ACL ACD C&A INF CCD CISD Literature
Further reading □ Overview □ 1998 □ 1 □ 2 □ 3 □ 4 □ 5 □ 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9 □ 10 □ 11 □ 12 □ 1999 □ 13 □ 14 □ 15 □ 16 □ 17 □ 18 □ 19 □ 20 □ 21 □ 22 □ 23 □ 24 □ 2000 □ 25 □ 26 □ 27 □ 28 □ 29 □ 30 □ 31 □ 32 □ 33 □ 34 □ 35 □ 36 □ 2001 □ 37 □ 38 □ 39 □ 40 □ 41 □ 42 □ 43 □ 44 □ 45 □ 46 □ 47 □ 48 □ 2002 □ 49 □ 50 □ 51 □ 52 □ 53 □ 54 □ 55 □ 56 □ 57 □ 58 □ 59 □ 60 □ 2003 □ 61 □ 62 □ 63 □ 64 □ 65 □ 66 □ 67 □ 68 □ 69 □ 70 □ 71 □ 72 □ 2004 □ 73 □ 74 □ 75 □ 76 □ 77 □ 78 □ 79 □ 80 □ 81 □ 82 □ 83 □ 84 □ 2005 □ 85 □ 86 □ 87 □ 88 □ 89 □ 90 □ 91 □ 92 □ 93 □ 94 □ 95 □ 96 □ 2006 □ 97 □ 98 □ 99 □ 100 □ 101 □ 102 □ 103 □ 104 □ 105 □ 106 □ 107 □ 108
Harwell Archives Contact us Heritage archives Image license terms

Search

   
⟶ CISD and DCI ⟶ Literature ⟶ W3C UK News (1998-2006)
⟶ CISD and DCI ⟶ Literature ⟶ W3C UK News (1998-2006)
ACL ACD C&A INF CCD CISD Archives
Further reading ⇓

□ Overview
1998
□ 1 □ 2 □ 3 □ 4 □ 5 □ 6 □ 7 □ 8 □ 9 □ 10 □ 11 □ 12
1999
□ 13 □ 14 □ 15 □ 16 □ 17 □ 18 □ 19 □ 20 □ 21 □ 22 □ 23 □ 24
2000
□ 25 □ 26 □ 27 □ 28 □ 29 □ 30 □ 31 □ 32 □ 33 □ 34 □ 35 □ 36
2001
□ 37 □ 38 □ 39 □ 40 □ 41 □ 42 □ 43 □ 44 □ 45 □ 46 □ 47 □ 48
2002
□ 49 □ 50 □ 51 □ 52 □ 53 □ 54 □ 55 □ 56 □ 57 □ 58 □ 59 □ 60
2003
□ 61 □ 62 □ 63 □ 64 □ 65 □ 66 □ 67 □ 68 □ 69 □ 70 □ 71 □ 72
2004
□ 73 □ 74 □ 75 □ 76 □ 77 □ 78 □ 79 □ 80 □ 81 □ 82 □ 83 □ 84
2005
□ 85 □ 86 □ 87 □ 88 □ 89 □ 90 □ 91 □ 92 □ 93 □ 94 □ 95 □ 96
2006
□ 97 □ 98 □ 99 □ 100 □ 101 □ 102 □ 103 □ 104 □ 105 □ 106 □ 107 □ 108

Issue 2: February 1998

WAI Domain

W3C has added a fourth Domain to its activities. Until recently W3C had three Domains (Architecture, User Interface, and Technology & Society) with the Web Accessibility Initiative originally part of the T&S Domain.

Judy Brewer heads the new WAI Domain. Judy joined W3C in September 1997 Prior to this, Judy was Project Director for the Massachusetts Assistive Technology Partnership, a U.S. federally-funded project promoting access to assistive technology for people with disabilities. Judy has a background in applied linguistics, education, technical writing, management and disability advocacy.

Judy Brewer: WAI Director

Judy Brewer: WAI Director

Technical activities of the new Domain include improving the accessibility of the World Wide Web by first ensuring that the technologies of the Web support accessibility. WAI working groups are ensuring that HTML 4.0, CSS2, SMIL, DOM, and other specifications include enhancements to support accessibility.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative is pursuing accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work:

Depending on an individual's disability (or the circumstances in which one is browsing the Web, for instance on a device with no graphics display capability, or in a noisy environment), graphics, audio content, navigation options, or other aspects of Web design can present barriers.

See: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for further information.

As an example of this Domain's work, ALT tags in HTML 4.0 are now mandatory. A LONGDESC attribute for images and tables has been added so that a detailed description can be stored with the item. Linearised tables are now easier to understand.

The Domain is coordinating with many organisations which have produced Web accessibility guidelines in the past to develop a comprehensive and unified set of accessibility guidelines. These will address browser accessibility, authoring tool accessibility, and content design.

The first public working draft of the Page Authoring Guidelines was made available this month. These guidelines should be a key reference for Web authors and site builders who want to ensure that their Web sites can be reached by the broadest possible audience.

Using HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 (CSS2) as a foundation, the WAI Page Authoring Guidelines provide strategies to improve the accessibility of document structure, navigation, and alternative formatting of content.

See: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WD-WAI-HAG for the first draft of the guidelines.

Much of the guidance applies to earlier versions of HTML as well. Examples of covered topics include images and image maps, audio and video, tables, links, frames, and user-input forms. The guidelines include several suggestions for how to test accessibility of Web sites, and conclude with a brief accessibility checklist.

CSUN Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference

The Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C will be having a set of meetings in conjunction with the CSUN Conference in Los Angeles from 17-21 March, 1998.

PICSRules

PICSRules became a W3C Recommendation at the start of 1998. PICS is a platform for associating labels (metadata) with Internet content. Originally designed to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, it has other uses, including code signing and privacy. Rating Agencies have started to appear that label internet content and filtering software has been developed to allow a parent to control the access of web pages to their children.

PICSRules is a mechanism for exchanging user settings allowing an easy one-click configuration of a browser. It allows such preferences to be easily saved, moved, and exchanged. With PICSRules parents can go to an organisation they respect and download initial settings which are recommended for, say, primary school children. Parents can then customise these settings according to their own preferences and share them with other parents.

The specification for PICSRules can be seen at: http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-PICSRules

PICSRules has two main parts. A serviceinfo clause that defines what labels should be used in assessing a document (such as using the labels embedded in the document or going to a label bureau you trust) and a set of policy statements.

For example, a light-hearted example of a mythical RAL rating service would be:

(PicsRules-1.1 
     (
serviceinfo(
  "http://www.ral.org/ratings/V1.html"
  shortname "RAL"
  bureauURL
  "http://labelbureau.ral.org/ratings"
  UseEmbedded "N"
           )
Policy (
RejectIf "( (RAL.science < 3) or
            (RAL.gifs >4)
          )"
        )
Policy(AcceptIf "otherwise")
     )
)

This would use the RAL rating system and would fetch labels from the label bureau that defines ratings according to this criteria rather than use any labels embedded in the documents by the author.

The proposed policy is to stop those documents being displayed that the label bureau considered had insufficient scientific content or contained too many gifs :-)

New Members

Seven new W3C members joined in January. The number of members has now reached 235 with a regional break down of:

Full Affiliate
Americas 31 105
Europe 31 35
Asia-Oceania 15 18

Two new Full Members are CITIBANK and the large Japanese mobile communications provider NTT DoCoMo which provides both satellite and cellular communication channels in Japan.

CSIRO, the Australian National Research organisation brings the number of Australian members up to five (compared with the UK's nine). The National Chiao Tung University of Taiwan has joined. There is beginning to be an increase in the number of University members, probably due to the more innovative work being conducted within W3C now that HTTP and HTML are more or less complete in terms of the first generation offerings.

Small companies continue to join as Affiliates. Two new members are Waterloo Maple (that sells the Maple algebraic system) and the HTML Writers Guild.

Future Events

As part of the W3C-LA Leveraging Action funded by the Commission, we are repeating the highly successful UK Symposium held at RSA in London in December in other European countries. Unfortunately, Tim Berners-Lee is unable to make these events but Judy Brewer will be in Stockholm to talk about WAI and Robert Cailliau, Tim's colleague from the early days at CERN, will give his personal view of the future. Robert is also Chairman of the International World-Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2).

These W3C Awareness Symposia will be held on:

   30 March    Stockholm
    1 April    Bonn
    2 April    Utrecht

As at RSA, each Symposium will be supported by a full set of demonstrations of W3C results. We shall also be exhibiting as part of the GMD Stand at CeBIT '98, Hanover, 19-25 March, 1998.

WWW7

The annual World-Wide Web Conference this year is in Brisbane, Australia from 14-18 April, 1998. Martin Bangemann (European Commission), John Patrick (IBM), Cathy Marshall (Xerox), Paul Saffo (Institute for the Future) have joined Tim Berners-Lee and James Gosling as invited speakers at the event. W3C will be running a track throughout the Conference describing many of the W3C activities and will make a major contribution to Developer's Day.

⇑ Top of page
© Chilton Computing and UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council webmaster@chilton-computing.org.uk
Our thanks to UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council for hosting this site